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GUIs should be fully keyboard-driven

ckardaris.com

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Re: GUIs should be fully keyboard-driven

#21

Post by hombre_fatal »

Agreed, but what "prevents" it is that making a good keyboard-driven UI takes a lot of taste, extra effort to build it, and it must be revisited any time the UI changes. It's duplicated work.

Ideally all GUIs/TUIs are usable with keyboard and mouse independently.

A good example of this is when you have a fancy keyboard-driven workflow yet you can't even do the most trivial task without placing two hands on your keyboard. Sometimes I just want to reach over and do it with one hand on the trackpad.

Re: GUIs should be fully keyboard-driven

#22

Post by onion2k »

On the web, keyboard accessible web UIs are a WCAG 2.1.1 level A requirement - that's literally the most basic level of accessibility standard (unless you count 'failed' as a level). If your website / web app isn't achieving that then you haven't tried very hard.

Re: GUIs should be fully keyboard-driven

#23

Post by binary132 »

Yes and no. The big advantage of a GUI is having interactive 2D coordinate input support (aka a pointer, or gestures.) While I think a keyboard can be a great control surface, that’s one thing it really lacks and only GUIs really offer. So to enforce that the whole GUI must be keyboard-drivable requires limiting the major advantage of the GUI. I’m a fan of the Emacs or Plan9 styles where the keyboard and pointer are able to be used together synergistically. You also see some of this in tools like video, DAW, and 2D/3D graphical scene editors.

Re: GUIs should be fully keyboard-driven

#24

Post by colesantiago »

I'm glad the fad of TUIs are dying, I don't get the hype of them.

We just need better, efficient and faster GUIs to put these TUIs to an end.

Take a look at gpgui and glaze leading on this. There should be no reason to use TUIs anymore.

It is time to move on from using this arcane technology from the 60s-70s.

https://gpui.rs/

https://glaze.app/

Re: GUIs should be fully keyboard-driven

#26

Post by escot »

I think we should also be finding ways to make things keyboard-driven that currently require a mouse. My side project is a keyboard centric flowchart editor which tries to merge the two between something typically 2D with pixel coordinates (normal flowchart software) and fitting it into a grid that has discrete coords so you can navigate with arrow keys.

Re: GUIs should be fully keyboard-driven

#28

Post by dpark »

cosmic_cheese wrote: post #19
pathartl wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Funny that you bring macOS, because for _decades_ I've struggled with navigating it without a keyboard. Windows components however, especially old ones, are incredibly accessible

As a system macOS definitely has some holes in keyboard navigation, as well as a couple corners which are KB-navigable but the way to focus them is not immediately obvious. On the app level, keyboard navigability depends on the developer. If they take the time to dot their I's and cross their T's it's between decent and great, but if they don't care it'll be bad.

MacOS has intentional holes in keyboard support. You have to go into settings and turn on a config for keyboard navigation to reach all elements. Apple intends for most users to navigate with a mouse.

It’s in the accessibility settings.

https://support.apple.com/en-za/guide/mac-help/mchlc06d1059/...

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